Rakesh 'Rocky' Agrawal fired after his Twitter outburst against senior execs at PayPal

Rakesh 'Rocky' Agrawal, who was appointed as director (strategy) by PayPal early last month, has been asked to leave the company after he published a series of tweets against a few of its senior executives. Some of Agrawal's Twitter 'victims' at PayPal include the company's global head of communications Christina Smedley and retail chief Don Kingsborough.

"Rakesh Agrawal is no longer with the company. Treat everyone with respect. No excuses. PayPal has zero tolerance," the company's official handle tweeted about Agrawal's ousting.

All this started when Agrawal published a tweet against Don Christmas on his personal Twitter profile. The tweet read, "People who should be fired from Paypal Don Christmas a pool a kick." In another tweet, he wrote, "Christina Smedley is a useless piece of shit."

However, Agrawal defended the tweets saying that this was all just due to a software malfunction. "Last night I was using a new phone that I bought because I wanted to test experiences on Android. Those messages were meant for a colleague," he added. "Note to self: don't test a new phone when sleep deprived after working your ass off for 20 hours a day while on vacation," he tweeted after his earlier tweets went viral.

According to a VentureBeat report, Agrawal declined to apologise to PayPal for his comments and is looking forward to his next business venture, reDesign Mobile.

A graduate of Northwestern University, with a bachelor's degree in journalism and concentrations in economics and sociology, Agrawal is a product and marketing strategist with over 15 years of experience in the web and mobile media. His areas of expertise include social networks, local, commerce, payments and mobile technologies. He consults on product and marketing strategy for a range of companies.

Previously, he had created innovative consumer products for Microsoft's Tellme, AOL Search, Washington Post and Newsweek. In the startup world, he had worked at uReach Technologies, which supplies communications solutions to wireless and broadband carriers.

Late last month, Gurbaksh Chahal, founder and CEO of US-based enterprise ad platform RadiumOne, was fired from the company after he pleaded guilty to domestic violence charges for assaulting his girlfriend.